Let the Lawsuits Begin - Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Sony Over PSN Hack

Due to the PlayStation Network's recent security failure, it was only a matter of time before legal action came against Sony. Kristopher Johns, a local California man, strikes first in the legal arena by filing a class action lawsuit against the electronics conglomerate. The man appears to be taking Sony's breach of security extremely serious and is coming at them with a team of six lawyers from two separate law firms.


Analysts across the industry have started estimating the potential cost of the recent PSN security breach. Micheal Pachter told Shacknews that in the week that PSN has been down, Sony has lost at least $10 million in revenue and $3 million in profits.

Those direct losses are likely the least of Sony's woes though. Indirect losses from the lack of consumer trust and confidence in the system will likely cost much more. Legal compensation is another potential cost. The Ponemon Institute speaking to Forbes placed the average cost of a criminal data breach at $318 for each record lost. At 77 million registered users, that makes for a hefty sum of just under $24.5 billion, and that doesn't take into account any costs associated with regaining consumer trust.

Hulu has already offered a free week of service in response to the downtime to subscribers, and Kotaku says that Sony has a range of special events and compensations planned this weekend for DC Universe Online and Free Realms. Who knows what Sony will need to do for compensation to gain consumer trust in the coming months.

And of course there's the expense of making sure that this doesn't happen again such as security investigation costs as well as rebuilding the network. Sony has asked developers to install a new SDK with advanced security features during the downtime to keep history from repeating itself.

This is a seriously expensive mistake for Sony, as is seen by the 5.2% drop in Sony's stock price since the breach.